Latin poem by Pope Damasus, for an inscription commemorating *Eusebius (bishop of Rome, ob. 308/310, S00545) at his tomb in the catacomb of Callixtus, on the via Appia outside Rome. The original inscription was replaced in the 6th century by a copy, after being broken into fragments. Written in Rome, 366/384.
Evidence ID
E07167
Type of Evidence
Inscriptions - Formal inscriptions (stone, mosaic, etc.)
Literary - Poems
Major author/Major anonymous work
Damasan and pseudo-Damasan poems
Damasus, Epigrammata 18 (ICVR IV, 9515)
Text in underlined capitals survives in fragments of the original inscription. The text in underlined italic capitals (lines 1 and 2) is from a fragment now lost.
DAmASUs episcopus fecit
HERAClius VETuit labsos peccata dolere;
EUSEbius misEros docuit sua crimina flere.
sciNDITur IN Partes POPULUS gliscente furore.
sediTio caedes BELLUM discordia lites. 5
exteMPLO pariter pULSI feritAte tyranni,
inteGRA cum rector SERVAret fOEDera pacis.
pertulit exilIUm domino sUB IUDICe lAEtus;
litore Trinacrio mundum VITAMQ(ue) relIQUit.
Eusebio episcopo et mARtYRi 10
(vertically down the left hand side)
DamaSI PApae cultor adque amator
(vertically down the right hand side)
Furius Dionysius Filocalus scribsit
‘Damasus the bishop made (this)
Heraclius forbade the lapsed to lament their sins,
Eusebius instructed the wretched to weep for their faults.
The people are broken into parties, with fury blazing up.
Sedition, murder, war, discord, quarrels.
Suddenly they were equally struck by the savage rage of the tyrant,
although the bishop preserved untouched the pacts of peace.
Joyous he preferred exile with the Lord as his judge;
he abandoned the world and his life on the Trinacrian [Sicilian] shore.
for Eusebius, bishop and martyr'
(vertically down the left hand side)
'An admirer and friend of Father Damasus,
(vertically down the right hand side)
Furius Dionysius Filocalus prepared this.’
Text of the 6th century copy
+ Damasus episcopus fecit
Heraclius vetuit labsos peccata dolere;
Eusebius miseros docuit sum crimina flere.
scinditur partes populus gliscent furore.
seditio caede bellum discordia lites. 5
exemplo pariter pulsi feritate tyranni,
integra cum rector servaret foedera pacis.
pertulit exilium omino sub iudice laetus;
litore Tinacrio mundum vitamq(ue) reliquit.
Eusebio episcopo et martyri 10
(vertically down the left hand side)
Damasis pappae cultor atque amatot
(vertically down the right hand side)
Furius Dionysius Filocalus scribsit
Differences from the original:
1. [initial cross] || 3. sum || 4. in om. || gliscent || 5. caede || 6. exemplo || 8. omino [preceded by space] || 9. tinacrio || left vertical: Damasis pappae || atque || amatot
Text and translation of original inscription: Trout 2015, 117-118.
Text of 6th c. copy: Ferrua 1942, 134.
Cult PlacesRenovation and embellishment of cult buildings
Protagonists in Cult and Narratives
Burial site of a saint - cemetery/catacomb
Rejection, Condemnation, SceptisismDestruction/desecration of saint's shrine
Non Liturgical ActivityRenovation and embellishment of cult buildings
Transmission, copying and reading saint-related texts
Protagonists in Cult and NarrativesEcclesiastics - Popes
Cult Related ObjectsInscription
Theorising on SanctityUsing saints to assert ecclesiastical/political status
Source
The poems of DamasusThe poetry of Damasus is the first substantial corpus of texts devoted specifically to the cult of saints. All but a handful of his surviving poems were written to be inscribed on stone and displayed at the tombs of the martyrs. The installation of these inscriptions formed part of a programme of monumentalisation of the sites of martyr cult, most of which originated as ordinary tombs in the cemeteries and catacombs around the city of Rome, and it was often accompanied by major remodelling and rebuilding of the tombs and their physical surroundings (see Trout 2015, 42-47). The poems were inscribed on marble plaques with very distinctive lettering ('Philocalian script') by the calligrapher Furius Dionysius Filocalus (Trout 2015, 47-52). This characteristic script makes it possible to identify fragments of inscribed text as Damasan even when the surviving remains are too small and fragmentary for the content of the inscription to be reconstructed.
Damasus' poems are of great importance for the history of saints' cult at Rome because, aside from what their content tells us, they are securely datable to his papacy (366-384). If a martyr is the subject of a poem by Damasus, it means that their cult was established and formally recognised at Rome no later than the early 380s; the only comparable, but much briefer, material is that in the Chronography of 354 (E01051, E01052). By contrast, the surviving Roman saints' lives are of very uncertain date and in most cases much later than Damasus' poems (which they sometimes used as a source: Lapidge 2018, 637-8).
There are two criteria by which poems can reliably be attributed to Damasus' authorship (or, at the very least, to production under his direct aegis): either because the inscribed text (or a fragment of it) survives, with its highly distinctive Philocalian lettering; or because Damasus refers to himself in the poem (which he does frequently). In other cases his authorship has been assigned on stylistic grounds. Since Damasus' style is quite distinctive (see Trout 2015, 16-26), this can usually be done reasonably securely, but there are a few instances where there is disagreement among editors as to whether poems are genuinely by Damasus (see E07149; E07190; E07503).
Survival of the poems
Only two of Damasus' inscriptions on the martyrs have survived more or less intact, those to Eutychius (E07169) and Agnes (E07189); a few others exist in fragments substantial enough to piece together most or all of the text, including the inscription from the crypt of the popes in the catacomb of Callixtus (E01866), and the poem to Felicissimus and Agapitus (E07170). But most of his poems either do not survive at all in their inscribed form, or do so only in small fragments of a few words or letters. Their survival is the result of their inclusion in syllogae – collections of inscriptions from the martyr shrines and churches of Rome, which were transcribed by pilgrims and then circulated in manuscript. The earliest syllogae seem to have been compiled in the 7th century, at the same time as the earliest pilgrim itineraries, and like the itineraries they were organised geographically, following the routes used by pilgrims around the city and its suburbs. Poems by Damasus therefore appear scattered through the collections according to their location.
No sylloge survives in its original form: those now extant were compiled from earlier manuscript collections (whose traces are sometimes evident in their structure). They were edited by de Rossi in vol. 2.1 of the first edition of ICUR (1888), which remains the only modern edition of the syllogae as such (as opposed to the individual poems they contain). For a descriptive account of the syllogae containing Damasus’ poems, see Trout 2015, 63-65; more briefly, Lapidge 2018, 638. The most important syllogae for the transmission of Damasus' poems are as follows:
The Sylloge Laureshamensis. A manuscript produced at the monastery of Lorsch in the 9th/10th c., now in the Vatican Library (Vatican, Pal. Lat. 833; digitised: digi.vatlib.it/view/bav_pal_lat_833). De Rossi believed it was a compilation of four existing collections, which he denoted as follows: Laureshamensis I (de Rossi 1888, 144-153), dating from the 9th c. (ibid. 142); Laureshamensis II (de Rossi 1888, 126-130), from the 7th c. (ibid. 124); Laureshamensis III (de Rossi 1888, 161-173), a collection of inscriptions from northern Italy, dating from the late 8th c. (ibid. 160); and Laureshamensis IV (de Rossi 1888, 98-118), dating from the 7th c. (ibid. 97), and the one that contains most of the Damasan material.
The Sylloge Centulensis (de Rossi 1888, 78-94). Produced in the monastery of St. Riquier (Centula) in the 9th/10th century, held for most of its existence in Corbie, and now in the Russian National Library at St. Petersburg (Codex Petropolitanus F XIV 1).
The Sylloge Turonensis (de Rossi 1888, 62-71). Produced at Tours in the 7th century, but surviving only in two manuscripts from 11th/12th c. Austria (Klosterneuburg Stiftsbibliothek Cod. 723; Göttweig Stiftsbibliothek Cod. 64 (78), digitised: manuscripta.at/diglit/AT2000-64).
The Sylloge Virdunensis (de Rossi 1888, 134-141). Produced at Verdun in the 10th century (Bibliothèque de Verdun, ms. 45; digitised: www1.arkhenum.fr/bm_verdun_ms/_app/index.php?type_recherche=cote&choix_secondaire=Ms. 45).
The Sylloge Einsidelnensis (de Rossi 1888, 18-33). Produced at the monastery of Einsiedeln in the 9th century (Einsiedeln, Stiftsbibliothek 326, digitised: www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en/list/one/sbe/0326).
Edition and formatting
Our entries use the edition of Damasus' epigrams by Dennis Trout (Oxford University Press, 2015). In his Latin text, Trout uses lower case to indicate material transmitted only in manuscript and upper case to indicate letters which survive on stone. We have used standard capitalisation, with material from inscribed fragments in underlined upper case. Apart from this, both text and translation follow Trout unless otherwise indicated.
Discussion
Original location: catacomb of Callixtus, via Appia, just outside Rome to the south.Physical remains: the inscription set up by Damasus was smashed in the 6th century, but a number of fragments were discovered by de Rossi in the mid 19th century, during his excavation of the Crypt of Eusebius, and by Joseph Wilpert in 1908 (Ferrua 1942, 129-31; de Rossi 1867, 191-5, is his own account). One fragment found by de Rossi was subsequently lost. The overall dimensions of the inscription are given by Trout 2015, 118, and EDB19478, as 94 cm x 180 cm; Ferrua 1942, 129, says merely that it was approximately the same size as the later copy. The height of the letters is 5.5 cm for lines 1 and 10, 3.7 cm for lines 2-9, and 1.6 cm for the vertical lettering (Ferrua 1942, 131; EDB19478).
After the destruction of the original, a replica was created. This was carved on the reverse of an existing inscription, a dedication to the emperor Caracalla dating from AD 214 (CIL 6.1067). It was also broken into fragments at some point, but almost all of these were found by de Rossi in the Crypt of Eusebius (de Rossi 1867, 191-3; Ferrua 1942, 134). Dimensions: height 87 cm; width 163 cm. Height of letters: Ferrua 1942, 134, gives only one figure, 4.5 cm, presumably for the main text (lines 2-9), although the inscription contains letters of three different sizes. Both inscriptions are now on display in the Crypt of Eusebius; for photographs, see their EDB entries.
Manuscript transmission: Sylloge Turonensis, Sylloge Laureshamensis IV. The versions in the syllogae are based on the 6th c. inscription, which contained a number of errors (de Rossi 1888, 66 and 102).
There are three texts in the inscription: the most important is Damasus' poem on Eusebius, but its eight hexameter verses are preceded and followed by two lines of prose, in larger letters, with the sentence 'Damasus the bishop made (this) / for Eusebius, bishop and martyr' (Damasus episcopus fecit / Eusebio episcopo et martyri); on either side there is another prose sentence, written vertically in much smaller letters, in which the calligrapher Furius Dionysius Filocalus, describing himself as Damasus' 'admirer and friend' (cultor adque amator) states that he wrote (scribsit) the inscription. It is one of three surviving inscriptions signed by Filocalus in this way: the others are a very fragmentary Damasan inscription from the catacomb of Praetextatus, whose dedicatee does not survive but has been identified as St Cyrinus (E07171), and a non-Damasan epitaph (ICUR I, 1486; ILCV 1997; EDB31272; no. 182 in Ferrua's Damasus edition).
The circumstances in which the original inscription was destroyed are not recorded, but the presumption in modern scholarship is that it took place during one of the wars of the 6th century, at the hands of either the Goths between the 530s and 550s or the Lombards in the 590s. Ferrua 1942, 133, favoured the latter, judging the quality of the replacement inscription to be poorer than those produced earlier in the century. He describes it as being made 'faithfully but ignorantly' (fideliter sed indocte – Ferrua 1942, 131). It is clear that considerable care was taken to reproduce the physical form of the original, but the text contains a number of errors, some of which (e.g. sum for sua in line 3, or the non-existent word amatot for amator) are so obvious that it is difficult to explain how they could have occurred. De Rossi (1867, 197) attributed the errors to the engraver copying fragments of the original text letter by letter, without considering the meaning. The 6th c. version of Damasus' signature text opens with the words Damasis pappae cultor, which as stands is both an erroneous transcription of the original (Damasi papae cultor) and ungrammatical; however, it is possible that it should be read as Damasi s(ancti) pappae cultor (Ferrua 1942, 134).
Eusebius was buried in the catacomb of Callixtus, but unlike most of his predecessors in the previous century, his tomb was not in the Crypt of the Popes (see E01866, E07166), but in a separate chamber some distance away, now known as the Crypt of Eusebius. The fact that Eusebius was buried separately was recorded in the 7th c. Notitia ecclesiarum urbis Romae (E00683), but the chamber was not identified until de Rossi discovered the fragments of the two inscriptions there in the 1850s (de Rossi 1867, 191-3). On the archaeology of the crypt, see Spera 2004, 39, 41-2, and the further references given by Trout 2015, 119; for de Rossi's reconstruction, see Images. Eusebius died in exile in Sicily during the reign of the pagan emperor Maxentius. His reburial in the Crypt of Eusebius probably took place soon after Maxentius was ousted by Constantine in 312 (on the possible context, see Davis 1997, 463, 467-8); the chamber was then enhanced by Damasus with the inscription, and probably additional redecoration (Spera 2004, 42).
Eusebius' tenure as bishop of Rome is very badly documented, to the extent that Damasus' short poem is the most important source of information about it. He took office in 308 (Davis 1997, 463, puts forward what seems a conclusive argument on this point; older scholarship often has 309 or 310), but was exiled from Rome after only a few months. His exile was the result of conflicts within the Christian community resulting from the Great Persecution, which affected Rome from 303 to 305. These centred on the treatment of the lapsed – Christians who had compromised during the persecution through actions such as handing over copies of the scriptures for destruction. Eusebius was the second of two bishops who took office only to be rapidly sent into exile as a result of disturbances over this issue. His predecessor, Marcellus, was also the subject of a poem by Damasus (E07191), whose language and imagery closely resemble this one.
According to Damasus, Eusebius came into conflict with a certain Heraclius (known only from this poem), who 'forbade the lapsed to lament their sins' (line 2). After the divisions in the Christian community flared up into violence (lines 4-5), Eusebius and Heraclius were both exiled from Rome by the emperor Maxentius, or as Damasus puts it, 'equally struck by the savage rage of the tyrant' (line 6). Eusebius died in exile in Sicily, the 'Trinacrian shore' (line 9, an echo of Virgil, Aeneid 1.196). Damasus refers to him as a martyr, though with the exception of the Notitia ecclesiarum urbis Romae (E00683), which may depend on Damasus' poem, no other early sources make this claim.
There is no reason to doubt the general outlines of Damasus' account, which coheres with widespread evidence for divisions left by the persecution across the Christian world, centring on the question of how forgiving the church should be towards those who had lapsed during the persecution. It is not clear from the poem which positions were represented by Heraclius and Eusebius ('in prohibiting the lapsi from bewailing their sins, Heraclius may either have wanted their readmittance without further ado, or have intended to bar them permanently' – Davis 1997, 467-8), and modern historians have differed in their conclusions. While the violence mentioned in line 5 is not attested in other sources, better-recorded divisions later in the 4th century (including those surrounding Damasus' own election as pope) are known to have led to considerable disorder and even bloodshed. Sághy 2000 argues that Damasus was deliberately drawing parallels between Eusebius' situation in this respect and his own.
Bibliography
Editions and translations:de Rossi, G.B., La Roma sotterranea cristiana II. Tavole (Rome: Cromo-Litografia Pontificia, 1867), tavole III and IV.
de Rossi, G.B., Inscriptiones Christianae Urbis Romae Septimo Saeculo Antiquiores, vol. 2.1 (Rome, 1888), 66, no. 24; 102, no. 31.
Ihm, M., Damasi epigrammata (Anthologiae Latinae Supplementa 1, Leipzig: Teubner, 1895), 25, no. 18.
Diehl, E., Inscriptiones Latinae Christianae Veteres, vol. 1 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1925), 177, no. 963.
Ferrua, A., Epigrammata damasiana (Rome: Pontificio Istituto di archeologia cristiana, 1942), 129-134, nos. 18 and 181.
de Rossi, G.B., and Ferrua, A., Inscriptiones Christianae Urbis Romae Septimo Saeculo Antiquiores [ICVR], n.s., vol. 4: Coemeteria inter Vias Appiam et Ardeatinam (Vatican: Pont. Institutum Archaeologiae Christianae, 1964), no. 9515.
Reutter, U., Damasus, Bischof von Rom (366-384): Leben und Werk (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009), 87-88, no. 18.
Aste, A., Gli epigrammi di papa Damaso I (Tricase: Libellula Edizioni, 2014).
Trout, D., Damasus of Rome: The Epigraphic Poetry. Introduction, Texts, Translations, and Commentary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 117-119, no. 18.
Epigraphic Database Bari, EDB19478, EDB43202:
https://www.edb.uniba.it/epigraph/19478
https://www.edb.uniba.it/epigraph/43202
Further reading:
Davis, R., "Pre-Constantinian Chronology: The Roman Bishopric from AD 258 to 314," Journal of Theological Studies 48:2 (1997), 439-470.
de Rossi, G.B., La Roma sotterranea cristiana. Tomo II (Rome: Cromo-Litografia Pontificia, 1867).
Lapidge, M., The Roman Martyrs: Introduction, Translation and Commentary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).
Picard, J.-C., "Étude sur l'emplacement des tombes des papes du IIIe au Xe siècle," Mélanges de l'école française de Rome 81:2 (1969), 725-782.
Sághy, M., "Scinditur in partes populus: Pope Damasus and the Martyrs of Rome," Early Medieval Europe 9:3 (2000), 273-287.
Spera, L., "Cal(l)isti Coemeterium (Via Appia)," in: A. La Regina (ed.), Lexicon topographicum urbis Romae – Suburbium, vol. 2 (Rome: Quasar, 2004), 32-44.
Images
)
De Rossi's reconstruction of the original inscription (de Rossi 1867, tav. III). Some fragments had not yet been discovered when this was published.
)
De Rossi's reconstruction of the 6th c. replacement inscription (de Rossi 1867, tav. IV).
)
Fragments preserving the opening lines of the original inscription (reproduced from Ferrua 1942, p. 132).
)
The other fragments of the original inscription extant in 1942 (reproduced from Ferrua 1942, p. 130).
)
De Rossi's reconstruction of the Crypt of Eusebius (de Rossi 1867, tav. VIII).
)
The location of the Crypt of Eusebius in the catacomb of Callixtus (reproduced from Picard 1969, p. 732).
Record Created By
David Lambert
Date of Entry
New entry 29/10/2025, replacing an earlier entry.
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S00545 | Eusebius, bishop of Rome, ob. 308/310 | Eusebius | Certain |
|---|
Please quote this record referring to its author, database name, number, and, if possible, stable URL:
David Lambert, Cult of Saints, E07167 - http://csla.history.ox.ac.uk/record.php?recid=E07167